adminFredrick Qaphelani Mabikwa Successful Solutions
In the recent past I wrote an article entitled “Live within your means” where I was just sharing that it’s important for us to be realistic about our financial potential and only commit ourselves financially to those things that our wallets allow us. I was just saying let us not buy “champagne” with our “beer” budgets. I just observed a few days ago what I thought was financial indiscipline. There is this habit of taking anything that comes our way as long as it’s to be paid for at the end of the month when we get paid.-this is financial indiscipline.
There are these people who come selling their wares at the workplace (or at home) and they say you can pay later. I observed at the workplace chickens come, someone takes on credit, vegetables come they take,amasi they take, clothes come ,they take (especially the ladies),pots and pans they take, come computers, laptops printers and cell phones they take. Then you ask yourself how much these colleagues earn? You tell yourself maybe they have other sources of income.
Come month end, the money is due, my good Lord, they don’t come to work they are off sick. If they are at work, they are so stressed, even when they walk, they walk like a robot. When their cell phones ring and they see who is calling, they will give the cell phones to colleagues and tell them to tell the persons that they are out.
Why create problems for yourself? Let those who have the money buy on credit. With all due respect to single mothers, I saw a single mother competing to buy on credit. She was forgetting that the other women are married and their husbands are gainfully employed. Look at yourself and be realistic about your financial potential. If your budget is a beer budget just buy the beer and not champagne.
When you walk like a zombie hiding behind shelves in the supermarket avoiding these people you owe money, it’s degrading. The credit stores are also calling, they want their money, you haven’t paid for three months and you start stammering on the phone. The banks are calling, you have left your bank where you were servicing a loan and you have joined a new bank to take yet another loan thereby creating a small “hell” for ourselves.
It’s slowly getting to be criminal. All because of want of “sweet” things in an assumed status.
Impulse buying is disorder. Let’s buy only those things that we need and we know we can afford. There are these two syndromes, the low density suburbs’ syndrome (LDSS) and the private school syndrome (PSS).
You find people stick to very high rents in low density suburbs, just to be maintaining an assumed status. They don’t actually belong there and they are always in debt because almost all their income is taken by rent.
Why not just go and stay where your income allows you and be happy there and create savings to do other important things in life?
Some of us have forced our way into private schools we cannot afford and we are paying fees from loans from certain banks.
Now how do you sustain a situation where you are taking a loan every term? You are messing up your life with something you can control.
Failure to manage finances has a ripple effect. When suddenly there is no money in the house, half the time there is no peace in that house. When money flies out of the house through the door, love flies out through the window, this is the beginning of domestic disputes.
There is nothing wrong with owing. Most of us owe in one way or the other but let it not be to the extent that makes you walk like a robot due to self created stress. Most of it is all because of the love of” sweet things” and competing with people, some of whom are not even aware that we are competing with them. So next time, when the “take now pay later scheme” comes, ask yourself before you take, “do I really need this thing-can’t I do without or can I wait?”
Debts can really get out of hand and you find now property (movable and immovable) being attached, all because of the love of “sweet things” and maintaining an assumed status.
Online Reporter